


Shooting Star

by ironspydr



Series: A Day in the Lives [2]
Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Guardian Angel AU, M/M, car crash but not described
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 02:36:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15764871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironspydr/pseuds/ironspydr
Summary: Again, just splitting up old oneshots, so uh. yeah.On the night Jeremy Heere was born, there was a shooting star outside the window of the hospital room.





	Shooting Star

**Author's Note:**

> i kinda like this one i think

On the night Jeremy Heere was born, there was a shooting star outside the window of the hospital room.

He was in his father’s arms, his mother having fallen asleep. She’d gone through a long labor. Her husband refused to let the nurse take his son to the nursery just yet. He wanted to show him his first night sky.

It just so happened that he’d also see his first shooting star. He’d later learn that shooting stars are just meteors. Stars don’t really fly. They don’t really fall. He’d also later grow tired of this story. His father would tell of how Jeremy giggled and cooed at the sight. The older Jeremy became, the more embarrassing and, frankly, boring the story got to him.

His father told it more often after his mother left. Jeremy knew it was helping him cope. He let him tell it as often as he needed. It was always the same.

His dad always made it sound like a miracle, or a sign that Jeremy would achieve great things. Jeremy wasn’t quite sure. His third grade science teacher said that these things were just coincidences. That was his word of the day. Coincidence.

Jeremy’s life was full of coincidental happenings. It never rained while he was outside—coincidence. He always had exact change—coincidence. He always remembered to use his coupons before they expired—coincidence. He’d never gotten food poisoning from the school cafeteria—coincidence. Meeting Michael Mell when they were four years old—definitely not a coincidence.

————————————

Michael was always there for him.

Michael was there when Jeremy fell and broke his ankle in kindergarten--he’d gotten the teacher. He was there when Jeremy got lost at the local fair--he’d helped him find his parents. He was there when Jeremy had panic attacks through middle school and into high school--with each one, Michael seemed to get better at helping Jeremy out of them. He was there when Jeremy’s mother had left. There wasn’t much he could do. He didn’t stop trying, though. He was always there for him.

Jeremy didn’t question it. He knew about coincidences. The only thing he knew wasn’t one was their meeting; he was convinced they were fated to meet, that it was their destiny. They’d always be together and he knew this better than he knew his name.

But he didn’t know why.

————————————

It was Jeremy’s 16th birthday, his sweet sixteen. His father wanted to give him a party, but Jeremy had already had a bar mitzvah and it had been enough for him. He said so. Too many people. So, Jeremy’s sixteenth birthday consisted of him, his father, and Michael in the Heere living room eating discount Walmart cake and watching TV. It was the first time in a while Jeremy had control over the TV remote, and he left it on the television program Too Cute! There was a marathon, and dammit, those puppies really were too cute.

Mr. Heere, like on all of Jeremy’s birthdays, told the story of the shooting star that was outside of his son’s hospital room window. He told it with the same enthusiasm as he always had, and Jeremy couldn’t feel embarrassed. For one, Michael already knew this story, and many more actually embarrassing baby stories. For two, Jeremy knew how much it meant to his father, and seeing his dad’s face light up like this was worth hearing the story over and over. 

Michael nodded along to each plot point, and Jeremy absently leaned his head on his shoulder. 

The three of them spent the afternoon like this, Jeremy in between his father and Michael on the small sofa, until Jeremy spoke up.

“Micah?” he asked, using his best friend’s childhood nickname. 

Michael adjusted himself so he could look at his best friend. “Yeah, Jer?”

Mr. Heere pretended to be engaged with something on his cell phone. 

“Let’s go for a drive,” Jeremy answered, his voice dreamy and floating. 

“What?” Michael almost choked on his fourth piece of birthday cake. “I thought you hated riding in the car,” he said warily. “You’re always anxious about it, Jer.”

“There’s a lot to be afraid of on the road, but--Not this time, I promise,” Jeremy pleaded. “I want to just...see things, you know? With you.”

Mr. Heere glanced over, making sure his son’s ‘you’ only meant Michael. When he saw that Jeremy’s gaze never left his best friend, he went back to his Angry Birds. 

“See things?” Michael’s voice was soft, a tinge of worry. “You see the town every day.” 

Jeremy hesitated, hoping his father was really as engrossed in his game as he seemed to be. “It’s not really about seeing things,” he admitted, looking down at his hands in his lap. His voice became impossibly lower, almost a whisper but raspy enough to not be. “I want to be alone with you.”

Michael blinked. Jeremy could tell he was searching himself for the right reaction. Finally, he spoke. “Why in a car, Miah?” That familiar nickname, as Jeremy had used for Michael earlier, caused a smile to play on Michael’s lips. It was contagious. Jeremy couldn’t help but smile, too.

“Not just a car!” Jeremy defended. “Your car! Your Cruiser! It smells--”

“Like weed?”

“No! Like memories!” 

Michael paused. “If you want to, I’ll do it.”

“Yes!” Jeremy pumped his fist. “Let’s go!”

Mr. Heere turned his phone off. “Now?” he said. “It’s getting dark, Jeremy.”

Jeremy groaned. “It’s my birthday,” he reasoned. 

Michael made eye contact with Jeremy’s father, but Jeremy couldn’t tell what their eyes were saying. 

“Fine,” Mr. Heere gave in. “If you end up staying at Michael’s, call me.”

Jeremy grinned. “Thank you!” He hopped up from his spot on the couch. “Come on, Micah!”

Michael sighed, but it wasn’t a sigh of discomfort or of annoyance. It was a Michael Sigh, and Jeremy had yet to figure out what those meant. 

He all but dragged his best friend off the couch, through the door--saying goodbye to his father, first, of course--and to his car in the driveway. 

Jeremy was in the passenger seat before Michael could even open his door. His seatbelt was on before Michael could close his door. Jeremy was staring at Michael as the latter put his key into the ignition and started the engine. 

“Liking the view?” Michael didn’t turn to look at Jeremy as he pulled out of the driveway. 

Jeremy scoffed. “I’m just excited,” he replied, still not looking away from the driver. 

“Really?” 

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“No, no,” Michael defended. “You just really don’t like car trips, so this is kinda, I dunno, out of character.”

“I told you, I just like being alone with you.”

“We could be alone in your room, or in my basement, or in another stationary location,” Michael pointed out.

“I just wanted a little change.” Jeremy turned away from Michael for the first time since he got in the car. Looking out of his window, he sighed. Not a Michael Sigh, no, those were only Michael’s. This was a sigh of defeat--A Jeremy Sigh.

“I can’t blame you,” Michael admitted. “Hearing your dad tell that star story every year must get old.

“That’s not really the issue.” 

“Then what is?”

“That was poor word choice.” Jeremy shook his head. “There isn’t an issue, really,” he tried to explain. He sighed once more. “I just wanted change,” he repeated, giving a small shrug. 

“Well, this is a change,” Michael agreed. “Usually you can’t stand to look out the window.”

“I’m sixteen now, Micah. I can do things.”

“Not arguing with that logic.”

The drive continued, and, soon, Jeremy returned to his previous position of staring at Michael. The taller boy occasionally checked to make sure he was okay with the car’s bumping and turning, but the rest of the time was mostly quiet. 

Jeremy had time to reflect. He thought about his friend, about Rich Goranski at school--who tormented the two of them relentlessly despite himself being little over five feet tall--about his father, and about the shooting star. 

He smiled up at Michael, who was busy focusing on the busy road. The sun was setting quickly, and headlights shone from the other vehicles like fireflies in a country sky. Jeremy decided that although some things were tough, Michael would never give up on him, and honestly, wasn’t that all that mattered? 

“Micah,” Jeremy started, but was interrupted. 

“You’ve never called me that as much as you have this afternoon, Jer,” Michael pointed out. “What gives?”

His reflection time had prepared him for this. He’d been thinking on it for a while, and this was what he wanted. 

Jeremy looked at Michael’s eyes, though the chocolate brown of them were pointed toward the street. He took a shaky breath, exhaled, then took a longer, shakier breath. 

“I think I love you.”

Michael’s eyes widened immediately, his chest visibly tightening, his breath hitching. He took his gaze off of the road for a moment to look his passenger in the eyes properly. Before Jeremy could repeat himself or take it back--not that he wanted to. Lord knew how long he’d been keeping that in--the car swerved and ran straight into the oak tree in its path.

————————————

“Jeremy?” He heard his name, but it sounded distant and echoic. “Jeremy!” The sound became closer. “Jer, come on!” It was his father. He seemed upset, worried. Jeremy wanted to tell him not to worry, but he didn’t know what he shouldn’t worry about. Was there something he forgot? Did something happen? He remembered...Oh, no. That must have all been a dream. He never went on a drive with Michael, he never told Michael that he loves him. He was only just waking up on his sixteenth birthday. His father would soon shove a cake in his face, take his picture, tell him about his birth--

“Jeremy, wake the hell up!” That wasn’t his father. That was Michael. Michael didn’t spend the night, why was he here? “You’re really scaring us!”

Scaring them? What--

A third voice, a woman’s, rang clearer than the other two. “Don’t pressure him. He can hear everything you say. Give him a few moments.” It was professional. Like a...doctor?

Jeremy’s eyes snapped open, but his body stayed still. He was in a bed. A bed in a room that wasn’t his. It smelled like cleaner. A hospital. He was in a hospital. That drive wasn’t a dream. They’d crashed. He must have been knocked out. His head hurt like hell, but he still couldn’t move much.

“Jeremy!” He saw his father by the foot of the bed, relief on his face. Michael was standing right on Jeremy’s left side. He looked really bad. There were cuts all over his face, a large bandage covering his right ear. 

As it turned out, the crash had totaled Michael’s car. The doctor from before, Dr. Huang, had told them that the collision should have been fatal. Neither of them should have walked away. Yet, here they were. 

The real news came when she told Jeremy his condition. He’d asked if he’d been paralyzed, and if that was why he couldn’t move. That wasn’t the case. He couldn’t move because the pain medication and anesthesia had to be that strong. Then came the question: that strong for what?

The answer wasn’t quite one that Jeremy understood. He saw his father nod occasionally, but he knew he didn’t understand either. Michael kept silent. 

A piece of the windshield had lodged itself in Jeremy’s abdomen. Michael’s car was too old to have airbags, apparently. Luckily, the glass missed his vital organs, but emergency surgery was necessary. The doctor was astonished that Jeremy’s organs had been spared--she mumbled something like ‘miracle’. There was bad news, however. 

The surgery was only partly successful, and a small piece of the glass remained in a place that would require more extensive surgery to remove. The problem was the survival rate. 

This particular surgery--even with the best surgeon the hospital could hire--was dangerously close to Jeremy’s small intestine. The glass shard had traveled away from the initial point of entry, where Dr. Huang and her team were able to extract the larger pieces. It was too deep to remove at that time. Now, it risked entering Jeremy’s bloodstream. 

Jeremy tried to process this. He tried a lot of things. He asked the doctor to repeat it, he asked his father to repeat it, he asked Michael to repeat it, he even repeated it to himself. To no avail. He couldn’t convince himself this was really happening. It wasn’t that the shock of being injured clouded his thoughts, and it wasn’t his underlying guilt that Michael had been hurt because of him. It was the fact that the story started with Jeremy telling his best friend that he was in love with him. He couldn’t believe he’d done that. 

The whole time, Michael stood close to Jeremy’s side. He looked more than worried, more than scared. He only spoke when Jeremy spoke to him, and his voice sounded beyond broken. Jeremy wanted to ask what the bandage on his ear was for, but that was for another time. 

Jeremy’s father had made a choice. They would opt for the dangerous surgery first thing in the morning, knowing it might be too late or ineffective. Anything to save Jeremy, he’d said. 

Everything felt numb to the birthday boy, and not because of the medication. Sometime during the night, he’d managed to fall asleep.

————————————

“Stay calm, Jer. This won’t hurt.”

Jeremy felt a pressure push down on the bed under him. His eyes snapped open. Michael stood above him, leaning an arm on the bed beside Jeremy’s head. 

“M-Michael?” Jeremy croaked, not sure at all what was going on. 

Michael shushed him. As his eyes adjusted, Jeremy could see that the cuts and scrapes that had been on his friend’s face earlier had vanished. The bandage over his ear was gone, the skin clean and smooth. As if it could provide an explanation, Jeremy glanced toward his father. The man was asleep in the stiff hospital chair, snoring ever so slightly. 

“Wha-” Michael shushed Jeremy again. 

“Stay calm,” he said, his voice barely audible. “This won’t hurt,” he repeated. 

Before Jeremy could even try to protest, Michael threw back the blanket from on top of him, exposing what he’d been too afraid to look at: his wounds. The numbing agent had worn off, but the IV connected to his arm was still pumping copious amounts of morphine through his system, and he still couldn’t quite feel anything below his chest. He did, however, feel nauseated as he looked down in instinct at himself. 

Bloodstained bandages--thick ones--were wrapped around his waist. His breathing hitched at the sight of how much blood there was. He couldn’t dwindle on it, however, because Michael was soon putting both his hands on Jeremy’s bandages.

Remembering being shushed, Jeremy stayed quiet, afraid of what Michael would do if he wasn’t. Though he couldn’t quite feel it, he could tell his friend was putting considerable pressure on Jeremy’s side. 

Frozen in confusion and fear, Jeremy couldn’t think. He couldn’t wonder what the hell Michael was doing. He could only watch on.

Suddenly, a warmth traveled straight from Michael’s hands--a warmth Jeremy could feel. It was accompanied by a sort of unexplainable glow. As the warmth deepened through Jeremy’s torso, the glow brightened. It was a pure, white color. Michael’s face had scrunched up, as if he were concentrating. Jeremy still couldn’t make a sound.

The warmth took over his entire body, and he suddenly felt more energized than ever. With a final flash of the glowing light, Michael fell back against the wall as if he were lightheaded. With the help of his newfound energy and the sight of Michael in turmoil, Jeremy bolted from the bed and to his friend’s side. 

Michael coughed. “Lie the hell back down,” he angrily whispered, gesturing to Jeremy’s father, still asleep on the chair, but no longer snoring. “You’ll wake him up.”

“Are you okay?” Just like Jeremy to ignore Michael’s wishes and forget all about a weird-ass light coming from the latter’s hands.

“Jeremy, I swear to God,” Michael muttered as he stood up straighter. “I’m fine. Lie down.”

“But-”

“Jeremy.”

Jeremy finally obeyed, noticing he could once again feel the area that had been numb minutes ago. It felt normal, there was no pain. 

From the bed, in a whisper as to not upset Michael again, Jeremy eventually asked, “What the hell did you do?”

————————————

Somehow, Jeremy’s father had remained asleep the entire time Michael spoke to Jeremy.

It had been strange, to say the least. 

“I healed you,” Michael said, as if it were the most obvious answer. He spoke again before Jeremy had a chance. “Look under your bandages if you want proof.”

“The doctor said I shouldn’t take them off, Michael!” Jeremy almost yelled. He was back into a somewhat coherent train of thought, and none of this was making sense.

“Fine,” Michael waved his hand. “They’ll see it in the morning anyway.”

“What are you talking about?!” 

Michael sighed, and it wasn’t a Michael Sigh this time. It was one of those “Oh boy, you’re in for a real treat” sighs. Jeremy’s mother used to sigh that way.

“You haven’t figured it out by now?” He sounded disappointed. Jeremy hated it when Michael sounded like this. It was usually his fault. 

“What are you talking about?!” Jeremy repeated, louder, earning a stern look from the other boy.

“You’re not in pain now, are you?”

“No, but-”

“You should have died in that crash, right?”

“Yeah, but-”

“We should both be dead, shouldn’t we?”

“What are you-”

“All the times you’ve said something was a coincidence,” Michael started, “has it really been one?”

“I don’t understand!” Jeremy was sitting up in the bed now, his hand on his side despite the lack of pain. 

“I really have to tell you, don’t I?”

“Please do!” Jeremy was almost in hysterics. 

“You really think always turning the television on at the best part of a movie is a coincidence? Or never getting melted ice cream on your hands when you have a cone? Or always stepping slightly to the side of gum on the sidewalk instead of onto it? What about-”

“What are you saying, Michael?! Are you trying to say you’re the one doing all of that? That’s impossible! I’m just lucky. You’re jealous!” 

“You’re not listening. You can’t honestly believe all of those things are coincidences. Every time? You’re obsessed with this coincidence thing.”

“They are coincidences! All the way from the dumb shooting star until-”

“Until you literally saw me heal your fatal wounds in front of you? Is that a coincidence?”

“Michael-”

“Speaking of that star,” Michael walked closer to Jeremy’s bed. “You think it’s a coincidence, too.”

“Are you saying that wasn’t just a lucky once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon? You’re being stupid, Michael, you-”

“Look at my face. I was supposed to get my ear removed from that wreck. Does it look injured to you?”

“No, but-”

“Coincidence?” 

Jeremy’s eyes wandered down to where his hand was still resting on his side. 

“Take the bandages off, Jer,” Michael said, his voice softer than the accusatory tone he’d adopted in the past few minutes. “Just look.”

It was a process, to say the least, to get the wet wraps off. But once they were removed, Jeremy gasped. Michael was right; there was nothing there but smooth skin. Nothing to indicate an injury or any sort of surgery. It couldn’t be a-

“Coincidence, Jeremy?”

“No,” he admitted. “It can’t be.” 

“Finally, you realize what I’ve been doing for you.”

“You- this isn’t possible. Unless-”

“I’m telling, you, Jer. That star wasn’t a-”

Jeremy snapped his head up from his side to look at Michael, his eyes wide. “That was you, wasn’t it?” His voice cracked, soft and weak.

Michael sighed--a Michael Sigh, this time. “I’m your-”

“Guardian angel?”

Michael blinked. “Well, actually, yeah.” His expression was one of surprise and sheepishness. 

“That’s how you- You’re an- Oh my god,” Jeremy struggled. 

Michael put an arm on Jeremy’s shoulder. “You just weren’t supposed to fall in love with me.”

“Wh- That’s what you’re worried about?! Not me knowing your secret? Not my dad finding out?? Not the doctors when they see I’m completely clean-”

“I’m worried about that part because,” Michael inhaled, “I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you, either.”


End file.
